Putin Signs Bill That Bars U.S. Adoptions, Upending Families

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin signed a bill on Friday that bans the adoption of Russian children by American citizens, dealing a serious blow to an already strained diplomatic relationship. But for hundreds of Americans enmeshed in the costly, complicated adoption process, the impact was deeply personal.

“I’m a little numb,” said Maria Drewinsky, a massage therapist from Sea Cliff, N.Y., who was in the final stages of adopting a 5-year-old boy named Alyosha. Both she and her husband have flown twice to visit him, and they speak to him weekly on the telephone. “We have clothes and a bedroom all set up for him, and we talk about him all the time as our son.”

But the couple fear that Alyosha may never get to New York. The ban is part of a bill retaliating against a new American law aimed at punishing human rights abuses in Russia.

The law calls for the ban to be put in force on Tuesday, and it stands to upend the plans of many American families in the final stages of adopting in Russia. Already, it has added wrenching emotional tumult to a process that can cost $50,000 or more, requires repeated trips overseas, and typically entails lengthy and maddening encounters with bureaucracy. The ban will apparently also nullify an agreement on adoptions between Russia and the United States that was ratified this year and went into effect on Nov. 1.

The bill was approved unanimously by the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Parliament, on Wednesday, and on Thursday, Mr. Putin said he would sign it as well as a resolution also adopted Wednesday that calls for improvements in Russia’s child welfare system. “I intend to sign the law,” Mr. Putin said Thursday, “as well as a presidential decree changing the procedure of helping orphaned children, children left without parental care, and especially children who are in a disadvantageous situation due to their health problems.”

Mr. Putin also brushed aside criticism that the law would deny some Russian orphans the chance for a much better life in the United States. In 2011, about 1,000 Russian children were adopted by Americans, more than any other foreign country, but still a tiny number given that nearly 120,000 children in Russia are eligible for adoption.

“There are probably many places in the world where living standards are better than ours,” Mr. Putin said. “So what? Shall we send all children there, or move there ourselves?”

United States officials have strongly criticized the measure and have urged the Russian government not to entangle orphaned children in politics. “We have repeatedly made clear, both in private and in public, our deep concerns about the bill passed by the Russian Parliament,” a State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, said Thursday.

Internally, however, Obama administration officials have been debating how strongly to respond to the adoption ban, and the potential implications for other aspects of the country’s relationship with Russia.

The United States relies heavily on overland routes through Russia to ship supplies to military units in Afghanistan, and it has enlisted Russia’s help in containing Iran’s nuclear program. The former cold war rivals also have sharp disagreements, notably over the civil war in Syria.

Photo

The Russian bill jeopardizes the already approved adoption of a Russian boy by Robert and Kim Summers of Freehold, N.J.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The bill that includes the adoption ban was drafted in response to the Magnitsky Act, a law signed by President Obama this month that will bar Russian citizens accused of violating human rights from traveling to the United States and from owning real estate or other assets there. The Obama administration had opposed the Magnitsky legislation, fearing diplomatic retaliation, but members of Congress were eager to press Russia over human rights abuses and tied the bill to another measure granting Russia new status as a full trading partner.

Mr. Putin loudly accused the United States of hypocrisy, noting human rights abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and he pledged to retaliate. But he held his cards even as the lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, approved the adoption bill by a large margin, followed by unanimous approval by the Federation Council.

Although his decision has been eagerly awaited, Mr. Putin seemed blasé at a meeting with senior government officials on Thursday. When Vladimir S. Gruzdev, the governor of the Tula region, said, “I would like to ask: What is the fate of the law?” Mr. Putin replied, “Which law?”

Like Mr. Obama, he can now say he is signing a bill with overwhelming support from the legislative branch — though Mr. Putin holds far more sway over Russian lawmakers than Mr. Obama does over Congress.

The adoption ban set off impassioned ideological debate here in Russia, and it opened a rare split at the highest levels of government with some senior officials speaking out strongly against it.

Critics said the ban would most hurt orphans already suffering in Russia’s deeply troubled child welfare system, while supporters said Russians should care for their own and pointed at sporadic abuse cases involving adopted Russian children in the United States that have generated publicity and outrage here.

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The response has been equally emotional in the United States, where three Russian adoptees, including Tatyana McFadden, 23, a medal-winning Paralympics athlete who uses a wheelchair, waited in the snow and rain on Wednesday to deliver a petition against the ban to the Russian Embassy in Washington.

Meanwhile, supporters of the ban in the United States said there were more than enough American children in need of adoption, and critics of international adoption generally reiterated complaints that the process is overly profit-driven and sometimes corrupt.

But for parents with their hearts set on adopting Russian children, the political discourse has been little more than background noise to their own personal agony. Senior officials in Moscow have said they expect the ban to have the immediate effect of blocking the departure of 46 children whose adoptions by American parents were nearly completed.

Adoption agency officials in the United States who work regularly with Russian orphanages said there were about 200 to 250 sets of parents who had already identified children they planned to adopt and would be affected. The State Department has urged American families in the process of adopting from Russia to register for updates and potential assistance.

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Kim Summers with the Russian boy whom she and her husband want to adopt. Their house is already filled with toys and clothes for him.

Robert and Kim Summers of Freehold, N.J., have already paid for three seats on a flight home from Russia next month. They are scheduled to pick up a 21-month-old boy whom they consider their son in the city of Kaluga on Jan. 14, after a required 30-day waiting period that began when a judge approved their adoption.

They plan to call the boy Preston, and their house is already filled with toys and clothes and pictures of him, said Ms. Summers, 49. “The stroller is in my dining room and the partly assembled crib is next to my bed,” she said.

“I’m appalled,” Ms. Summers said of news that the ban would become law. “I can’t even fathom what is happening, something so political that has absolutely nothing to do with children.”

One mother from North Carolina who was in Russia on Thursday preparing to return to the United States with her newly adopted son expressed outrage that Russian officials were not adhering to a requirement in the new bilateral agreement on adoptions that called for one year’s notice if either side wanted to terminate it.

This mother, who requested anonymity out of fear that her that were family would be blocked from leaving Russia, described how the relationship between parents and children begins long before the children leave the orphanage. She and her husband adopted a boy in Russia in 2009 and returned with him last week to pick up his new brother.

“A lot of parents leave little picture albums with the children, with pictures of the new Mama and Papa and siblings and pets and bedrooms,” said the mother, who is in her 30s and works in marketing.

“Facilitators help us put labels on the pictures so that the caregivers can help the children get familiar with the new faces,” she said. “I weep to think of them holding those albums and wondering why the people that promised they would be back in a few weeks have never come back. I promised both my boys that I would be back and I have no idea what I would have done if I couldn’t have come.”

This mother said her older son, now almost 5, learned about his own adoption by watching his parents adopt again. “He actually said, ‘I’m a really lucky boy that you picked me,’ ” the mother said.

In Sea Cliff, Ms. Drewinsky, 44, and her husband, Yvan, 56, an aviation consultant, grew up in Russian families, speak Russian and belong to the Orthodox Church. They speak to Alyosha, 5, every week on the phone in Russian.

Alyosha’s birth mother, who suffers from serious psychiatric illness, left him to wander the streets when he was 3; other relatives would not take him. A judge approved the adoption and they planned to go to Russia in late January or early February to bring him home.

As the couple got to know the boy in the first of two three-day visits, he held their hands and asked, “Are you going to be my new parents?” Mr. Drewinsky recalled. “We choked up and asked him, ‘Would you like that to happen?’ He said ‘yes’ in such a lovely voice — full of hope — that we melted completely.”

David M. Herszenhorn reported from Moscow, and Erik Eckholm from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on December 28, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Russia’s Plan to Bar Adoptions Upends Families. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe